Photo courtesy of Audrey Tangye.
Audrey Tangye stands in front of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection sign at the Antelope Wells Border Station in Antelope Wells, New Mexico during the Tour Divide bike race Tangye completed in honor of her friend, Grace Ragland, to raise money for the Tanner Foundation for Neurological Diseases.
There are a lot of logistics that go into planning to participate in a 2,750-mile bike race, such as the Tour Divide.
What will you eat? Where will you sleep? Who will pick you up at the finish line? Who will watch your two children? Who will watch your dogs? How will you pay for it?
So when Grace Ragland asked her friend Audrey Tangye to race with her in 2018, Tangye originally said yes, but then she later backed out.
“I wanted to go, but it just didn’t work out,” Tangye said. “I had kids and just too many responsibilities that I couldn’t let go of at the time.”
But Ragland, who had multiple sclerosis, said she needed to go ahead and ride. “I don’t know what next year holds for me,” she told Tangye then.
A few months after finishing the race, Ragland was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma. Ragland died in January 2020.
“I was at her funeral, and her family said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if somebody rode her bike on Tour Divide to the finish line again?’” Tangye said. “They all come running up to me and said, ‘You have to do this!’”
Tangye later discovered Ragland’s bike was too small. Nonetheless, Tangye completed the race in honor of Ragland and raised $13,500 for the Tanner Foundation for Neurological Diseases.
“I was shocked and couldn’t believe it,” she said. “When I was on the ride, when I had service, I would pull up the share page and would check what had been donated. It motivated me. When people are donating that kind of money, you can’t quit. You can’t just say, ‘I don’t feel like doing this anymore.’ You keep pushing forward.”
Tangye was on the trails from June 11 to July 9. The Tour Divide route goes from the Canada to Mexico borders. Some areas are extremely remote and some areas are “grizzly country.” She saw two grizzlies during her ride, Tangye said.
Even though she biked about 82 miles per day, she had no crashes or injuries and only one minor mechanical issue. “I lucked out,” she said.
She has lots of good memories from the trip, she said.
“You meet so many people, and sometimes you’ll be alone for hours, and suddenly you come across somebody, and they’re glad to see you, too,” she said. “You end up riding together, and you get to know them.
“The thing about bikepacking is having an open mind and being flexible to change. You can’t really have a plan. You can have a semiplan of what you’d like to happen, but a lot of times you get tired or it rains or whatever. Just being open to meeting people and sharing experiences with them, and not being afraid to be alone. Open your mind and your heart, and you’d be surprised at what you can accomplish.”
People often ask Tangye if she would do it again.
“I don’t think I would do it again in its totality, but I would do the sections that I loved that were beautiful,” she said.“If everyone could do something this epic, they’d realize how unimportant everything else is.”
